This invention relates to chub forming apparatus.
In the past, a variety of chub forming machinery has existed, which generally includes some means for pumping comminuted material such as sausage meats, some means for packaging such material in tubing, and some means for dividing the packaged material into individual chubs. Tipper Tie, a Dover Industries company, has been a leader in the advancement of the art as to such machinery. In a typically advanced Tipper Tie.TM. machine, comminuted material is pumped into a stuffing horn assembly comprising one or more stuffing horns about which casing has been manually placed. The material and casing exits a casing brake mechanism which provides tension to the casing and controls product size. Adjacent the casing brake mechanism, a highly automated clipper mechanism intermittently voids portions of the cased material, applies pairs of metal clips to the voided portions, and cuts between the clips to complete the formation of chub products.
In contrast with the advances in the formation of chub products with casing, a common practice in the formation of net enclosed products is manual production. As most pertinent to the invention, comminuted material is pumped through a horn and both collagen material and netting are fed about the comminuted material. The advance of the netting and collogen material is controlled manually, as is voiding and clipping. Alternately collagen film is manually wrapped about whole muscle products, which are then manually pushed through a chute into netting. With pumped comminuted material, the situation is complicated by the use of the collagen material, in that the collagen material is formed into a loose cylinder having loose longitudinal edges. These edges are intended to overlap uniformly, but are not fastened to each other. The result is that the overlap is not uniform, and the collagen material often gaps along its edges, exposing internal material to the air and foreign matter. The resulting product is often not suited for commercial distribution and sale. The manual nature of the production also leads to disparities in product size, weight and condition, and substantial expenditure of labor and materials.